CLEAN OUT YOUR CABINETS

We eat about 17 teaspoons of added sugar each day, most of it hidden in processed foods. And that’s bad news.

THINK ABOUT YOUR GO-TO GROCERY store– picture its floor plan in your head. Most likely, around the perimeter of the store are the fresh produce, meats and sea food, eggs, bread and diary products, while the middle aisles are stocked with pantry goods. If you’re a typical consumer, you probably spend some time shuttling back and forth between both of these sections.

But if you’re trying to make an anti-inflammatory diet part of your daily lifestyle, its essential to keep your shopping-cart wheels in the outer ring, and supplement these mostly fresh items with a few specific items from the center aisles, including legumes, nuts, spices and whole grains. The inner shelves are typically cluttered with tempting overly-processed foods, ones filled with sneakily dangerous ingredients that can exacerbate inflammation in our bodies. That’s the stuff it’s important to ignore.

Sugar, perhaps unsurprisingly, is a top culprit when it comes to inflammation. We eat about 17 teaspoons of added sugar each day, most of it hidden in processed foods. And that’s the bad news. According to research from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, ingested processed sugar releases cytokines, our body’s inflammatory messengers. There’s more: According to Sugar Science, a site developed by health scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, 74% of processed foods contain added sugar, with many containing multiple types of sugar.

Trans fats and saturated fats are other common inflammation triggers. You can find these in foods such as cheeses and full-fat dairy products, red meat and processed meat, fried foods, and processed snack foods like cookies, crackers, and frozen breakfast products. A few of the aforementioned products also contain refined carbohydrates. Some examples are foods that are made with white flour, white rice, and some cereals too–these products have a high glycemic index that can increase levels of a type of protein in your body called advanced glycation end (AGE) products. An increase in AGE products is directly linked to increased inflammation.

If this list of foods feels like it makes up the majority of your diet, you’re not alone. These types of overly processed foods are everywhere– they’re what’s advertised to us, what’s featured on the high-visibility “endcaps” at the ends of grocery store aisles, and what many of us think of as comfort foods. The good news is that including more anti-inflammatory foods in your diet doesn’t have to mean a complete overnight overhaul of your eating habits. As long as you’re committing to change, making a conscious effort to include more plants, spices, and just generally eating with short ingredient lists of items that you can pronounce, you’re on the right track.